Software

Yahoo! has rolled out a new update to its instant messaging client for the iPhone which finally brings Push Notification.

While the incremental 1.2.1 update brought a few bug fixes, the biggest is the addition of Push Notification which finally brings Yahoo! up to speed with AOL’s competing instant messaging App. Yahoo! IM can be downloaded from the App Store.

Details are scarce right now but it appears a few independent developers have created a Portal clone for the iPhone. While a video of some scarce gameplay has been uploaded to YouTube, there is no release date on the fan created clone.

Apple integrated voice controls in to the iPhone 3GS giving the platform better accessibility controls but even more improvements are coming in Firmware 3.1.

The current Beta has revealed that Apple is making use of the home button on the iPhone and iPod Touch. By triple clicking the home button a menu pops up allowing users to toggle voice control, white on black and zoom capabilities.

George Hotz, the first to develop an unlock for the iPhone 3GS has released an updated unlock for the device.

The unlocking method which uses a similar, unpatched exploit found in the iPhone 3G has been streamlined. The new App called Purpelra1n, makes the unlocking process much easier and fixes previous issues with Purplesn0w.

Wifi fails? Battery fails? Unlock fails? You need purplesn0w, the geohot 3GS unlock solution. Now I know you here a lot about different colors of sn0w, but I’m here to tell you why purplesn0w is the best. First off, what is purplesn0w? It’s a soft unlock for your 3GS that I’d actually use day to day. It’s not a daemon that takes any resources, and it doesn’t add a task to your baseband. It’s very close to a true unlock.

However, there are some caveats such as the lack of support for “hacktivation” and some minor improvements are coming soon to the App. Your iPhone 3GS must be already Jailbroken using either QuickPwn, Redsn0w or Purplera1n.

Some iPhone users are reporting that after upgrading to Firmware 3.0, references to MobileMe change back to the now defunct .Mac moniker.

The bug only appears after users upgraded to Firmware 3.0 and have MobileMe accounts saved on their iPhones. Similar to an issue where icons for various Apps became mismatched, FIrmware 3.0 will often change any references to “MobileMe” back to “.Mac” which includes any URLs and usernames. However, the bug only seems to affect mail, contact and calendar syncing. A fix has been proposed which requires users to delete their MobileMe account information on their iPhones and enter it in again. Hopefully an official fix from Apple arrives soon. If you have this issue, leave us a comment and let others know.

Well, after all the excitement and being unable to sleep, waking at 5am (I did try to go back to sleep), major disappointment struck when I, like many others, received the message that “The iPhone [xxxxx] cannot be updated at this time because the iPhone activation server is temporarily unavailable”

After cruising through the download, this was most unexpected. You would expect the download servers to struggle more than the activation servers. especially as Apple has had problems with this in the past. You would have expected they would have fixed this problem by now.

It’s 5:56am, I’m cold and tired and rather letdown.

Given its past experiences, it is quite poor that Apple wasn’t properly prepared for this.

I have read of some folks taking 2 to 3 hours to get through, so I think I might go back to bed and try to get another hour of sleep.

With the anticipation and excitement equal to getting a new phone\, Apple finally released iPhone 3.0 at 10am US west coast time today.

For those of us who start the day earlier than that, it was a long wait, clicking the “Update” button every nanosecond to see if it was available. We were worse than our kids… “Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?”

iPhone 3.0 includes many new features that will be almost like getting a new phone:

Cut, Copy & Paste

Landscape Keyboard

MMS

Spotlight Search

Voice Memos

Improved Calendar

Buy Movies, TV Shows, and Audiobooks

Enhanced Stocks App

Safari Improvements

Internet Tethering

Stereo Bluetooth

Automatic Wi-Fi Login

Sync Notes

Parental Controls

iTunes Store Account

YouTube Login

Shake to Shuffle

New Languages

MobileMe Find My iPhone and Remote Wipe

With copy and paste, MMS, and msg forwarding this long awaited update will bring the iPhone fully into the 21st century.

After being hinted at in an early Beta for iPhone Firmware 3.0, “Find My iPhone” has finally been announced and leverages the power of Mobile Me.

“Find My iPhone” allows users to log in to their MobileMe profile and track the exact location of their iPhone on Google Mpas. If your iPhone lost, you can send a notification with an alert even if the ringer is turned off. However, if your iPhone did fall in to the hands of a thief, you can send a command that would completely wipe down your device.